Obamacare a Threat to White Castle and IHOP. This Time, It’s Personal

Oh, that’s right. Obamacare, filled with stealth Nanny State penalties and taxes aimed at further controlling your life, is now threatening the yummy eats found at White Castle and IHOP, among others.

The Columbus-based family owned restaurant chain – known for serving small square hamburgers called “sliders” – says a single provision in the bill will eat up roughly 55 percent of its yearly net income after 2014.

Starting that year, the bill levies a $3,000-per-employee penalty on companies whose workers pay more than 9.5 percent of household income in premiums for company-provided insurance.

White Castle, which currently provides insurance to all of its full-time workers and picks up 70 to 89 percent of their premium costs, believes it will likely end up paying those penalties. The financial hit will make it hard for the company to maintain its 421 restaurants, let alone create new jobs, says company spokesman Jamie Richardson. White Castle employs more than 10,000 people nationwide, and more than 1,200 in Ohio.

This is just another “in” for some controlling bureaucrat-y sour pusses who are wanting to get all up in our stuff. Pry my sliders out of my cold, dead hands! I suggest a new slogan: “No Grease, No Peace!” Someone has to speak up for our delicious eateries. In fact, it would be Un-American to do otherwise. You know this isn’t one of those ‘unintended consequences’, only discovered once we were finally allowed to find out what was in the bill – that had to be passed first. It is clearly an intended consequence.The ‘laser-like focus’ on jobs has proven to be a laser-like focus on killing all jobs in industries that the Obama administration deems icky and evil. Including the restaurant industry, particularly the fast food segment of the same. Remember, Michelle Obama has her war on childhood obesity and says that fat kids are a national security threat. I don’t think she’s really being fair there. While her husband is childishly naive and immature, he isn’t fat by any means.

Every time I feed my 7 year old daughter chicken nuggets, I now wonder if I should turn her in as a dangerous threat to this nation. To the Obama administration, donuts equal terrorism and fast food restaurants are, therefore, equivalent to jihadist training camps. And we common rubes obviously fall prey to their nefarious schemes without the aid of Big Daddy Government jumping in to save us. So we lose our jobs? Big whoop! At least we’ll be thin when we do so!

And that is what it’s all about; Big Daddy Government. Besides the new penalties put in place, there are also menu mandates that place a financial burden on many companies. Mary Katherine Hamm points it out over at The Weekly Standard:

Adding new menu boards, drive-through menus, a menus is an expensive prospect, especially when even advocates of menu labeling can point to no evidence that it actually works.White Castle has been offering health care to its employees since 1924. It pays 70-90 percent of health-care costs for those employees. The company cannot be considered one of the health-care system’s bad actors, even by the most ludicrous lefty’s standards. But when good behavior is punished, you will not get more of it. Now, the company says it will consider dropping employee-based coverage and putting employees in federal exchanges— a scenario which, before Obamacare passed, was considered a paranoid right-wing talking point.

Sigh. Democrats, stop destroying our livelihoods and leave our penchant for excess alone. It is a personal decision, a lifestyle choice, or perhaps even a deathstyle choice. (I’m talking to you, Death Panels. I’d rather have deep-fried bacon-wrapped macaroni and cheese than a little blue pill) We like, you know, being employed. And we also like our greasy, salty food. Yet, we still remain some of the richest and most productive of people – weird, huh? Funny how freedom, and that free market thing, works.